During PAX South last month, Miguel was interviewed on the Player.me/Devolver digital stream about Russian Subway Dogs. This is the first gameplay video since the Kickstarter back in September. It really shows how far the game has come and gives a nice little taste of some of the hidden depths and interactions players will discover!

The video should go right into our segment but if not, you'll find it at around 6 hours, 33 minutes in!

I've been posting progress on Russian Subway Dogs pretty regularly on twitter, but it can be hard to hunt them down if you miss them. I figure it'd be good to have them all in one place, so what I'm planning on doing is posting a big gallery round up of all the images approximately once a month.

I was interviewed a few weeks ago by the folks at BigSushi.FM, it was during a craaaazy heatwave in Toronto and I slowly became more and more heatstroke delirious as it progressed. We discuss a whole bunch of the things I’m involved in, not just They Bleed Pixels but Comics vs Games, The Hand Eye Society and even my brief foray into the world of special effects for film (*cough* Cube2: Hypercube *cough*).

They also covered the OCAD Start Show in September. Around a minute in they interview me about Cephalopods: Co-op Cottage Defence. If your quick you can also catch Andrew and his kid playing the game in the background.

If you're wondering about the big black squares around everything, it looks like they ran into a common gamemaker bug while capturing it at EP (If you're getting that bug at home, a good old reboot usually fixes it). Lesson learned! After seeing that we're definitely going to be providing our own footage to journalists in the future.

We recently had Nuit Blanche 2010 in Toronto, an all night event where the city is filled with all sorts of art, from gallery shows to huge building sized interactive installations. This year it also had an arcade thanks to The Hand Eye Society. Our game Cephalopods: Co-op Cottage Defence was one of the indie games exhibited.

There were six cabinets in all, each running an indie game made in part or in whole by people in and around Toronto. Unfortunately the Osmos cabinet, a modified original Torontron, gave up the ghost and had to be reverted to it's standard set of games.

Cephalopods: Co-op Cottage Defence got a new arcade specific build, and (finally) a proper title screen. I'm still doing some tweaks before I put the home version up on the Spooky Squid website, but the old version is still available for play.

A full shot of the cabinet complete with back lit marquee.

The arcade took place in an amazing space at the brand new TIFF Bell Lightbox Building. The Lightbox was designed for film festivals which means we also had access to a huge projector...

...which was used for rounds of Everyday Shooter, Cephalopods: Co-op Cottage Defence, and a midnight Nidhogg tournament!

The award winning Nidhogg was our international guest game for the event. You can really see the size of the screen here.

Several of the cabinets will now be loaded up with multiple games and distributed around the city. Each cabinet is set up for different control schemes. Shown here the 'one button' cabinet playing Silent Skies!

Mark Rabo from Gamercamp put together a great video of the event:

And the TIFF folks produced this one with an awesome packman soundtrack:

This was put together thanks to a huge number of volunteers and several generous sponsors. Full list of games and everyone involved is posted on the Hand Eye Society Website.

If you've been following our twitter feed you know this has been the year of indie game events here in Toronto, the Hand Eye Society has ended up being wildly more successful then any of us expected and there have been a ton of side projects and events spawned by it. If you're in Toronto two events are coming up in the next few days that are well worth attending:

START

Tomorrow night (Oct 16) is the gala event for START a celebration of independent games at the Ontario Collage of Art and Design. They've been showing a huge number of independent games from around the world all week in a great space on big projected screens. We probably won't be there due to being in the last week of grant writing hell (Canada's grants are awesome. Writing hundred plus page submissions, not so much) but a new build of Cephalopod's Co-op Cottage Defense will be there and projected huge! The space they have is amazing and it's well worth checking out even if you miss the gala.

As part of START the folks at Gamercamp put together this great trailer on the local indie scene.

It's part of a bigger project they're working on. I'm really looking forward to seeing what they make from all the interviews they've been doing.

The Indie Showcase

On Saturday (Oct 18) my friend Alex from Golden Gear Games is holding the Indie Showcase with live music, presentations from local indie developers, more games to play and, weather permitting, games projected outside on a 40 foot wall! Info on the event here. We will not be attending, again due to what will by then be a full blown grantpocalypse . However Night Balloonists and Cephalopod's Co-op Cottage Defense will be playable.

More events coming soon (and eventually more development vids I freaking promise!).

Been quiet on the blogging front for a bit, but not to worry we've just been busy on Guerrilla Gardening and some other projects. Here's a rather epic sized interview with the folks at RGBfilter that hopefully makes up for our absence. [blip.tv ?posts_id=3897684&dest=-1]

It was taped a few months ago, so I don't remember everything we talked about. I know we touched on my not-so-mysterious origin story, the Toronto indie game scene, the inspiration for Co-op Cottage Defense and Guerrilla Gardening... oh and that pesky are games art debate crops up as well.

The excellent (and totally free!) Toronto Comic Arts Festival(TCAF) is coming up this weekend. Unlike your typical comic event this one is all about independent creators and small press comic books from around the world. It's also really big for an indie media event, taking up two floors of the Toronto Reference Library (Yes the one where Knives and Ramona fight in Scott Pilgrim vol.2). Toronto's local indie games initiative The Hand Eye Society is setting up a booth at TCAF with a bunch of playable games and we're one of the participants. Here are the Spooky Squid Games @ TCAF specific details:

Despite the mysterious absence of the mighty Torontron, Gamercamp last weekend was a fantastic success. Andrew and I kicked things off with a short demo of Guerrilla Gardening and were followed by several hours of local indie hotness in the form of short demos and longer talks. Everything was caught on tape so videos of our demo should be up online soon. Though I wouldn't be surprised if the organizers: Mark Rabo and Jaime Woo take a well earned break before getting that stuff up online.

Andrew and Miguel address the United Nations regarding their resolution for the deification of molluscs with bilateral symmetry.

After the disappointing corporateness of this years Vortex Competition, Gamercamp was breath of fresh air, putting the artistry of games front and centre. I can't wait to see how it grows and matures over the next few years. I may get my wish of a Toronto equivalent to Culver city's Indiecade yet.

The event's been well covered on local blogs, here's a little round up:

A Couple of Gamers - Kindly described me as "looking like a hot indie dj" rather then "wild haired and unkempt, eyes filled with madness".

The Toronto indie game events for this month aren't over yet! The next Hand Eye Society Social is this Thursday (Nov. 26). It's open to the general public as always and hosted this time by musical shooter artisan Jonathan Mak of Queasy Games.

Spooky Squid Games

Carefully crafted independent games mixing old school presentation with modern design. A fine blend of super cute pixels and dark occult secrets. Creators of Night of the Cephalopods, They Bleed Pixels and others.

SPOOKY SQUID GAMESCarefully crafted independent games mixing old school presentation with modern design. A fine blend of super cute pixels and dark occult secrets. Creators of Night of the Cephalopods,They Bleed Pixels and others.